[66] See Josephus, Antiqq., XIII., viii., 4; XVI., vii., 1; Wars, I., ii., 5.
[67] This point has been admirably discussed by Dr. Salmon in his sermon on "Present Salvation" in his volume of sermons styled The Reign of Law, pp. 295-99.
[68] This controversy between the Antinomian party and the London Nonconformists of the orthodox sort is now almost unknown, and yet it created great excitement in religious circles, conformist and nonconformist, in the time of William III. Bishop Stillingfleet of Worcester, the aged Baxter, and many of the leading divines, joined in it. The echoes of it will be found resounding in the more modern controversy between John Wesley and Fletcher on the one side, and Rowland Hill and Lady Huntingdon on the other, about the year 1770. A brief account of Dr. Daniel Williams will be found in Schaft's edition of Herzog's Cyclopædia; see also Calamy's Life i., 323.
[69] As some readers may not know what the work called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is, let me explain its history in a few words. Early Christian writers, from the year A.D. 200, speak of a work called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles in the highest terms. It was evidently, as known by them, a manual used in the catechetical instruction of the young. This manual was known to all the early ages, but disappeared from the view of the Western Church during the middle ages. Nearly twenty years ago it was discovered in Constantinople by the learned Greek Bishop Bryennios, and published by him about ten years ago. It is assigned by some critics to the concluding years of the first century. A convenient and cheap edition of it will be found in the second volume of the Apostolic Fathers in Griffith and Farran's "Ancient and Modern Library." It is called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or else the Didache, using a Greek title, which has the advantage of being shorter.
[70] The method of sprinkling is completely unknown to the Church ancient or modern, and should be absolutely rejected, as tending to a disuse of the element of water at all.
[71] The case of Perpetua and Felicitas, and the other famous martyrs of Carthage in the beginning of the third century, proves that pouring with water must have sufficed for baptism in a Church so intensely conservative as the Church of North Africa. Tertullian in his writings often reproves its members for the superstitious extremes to which they pushed their conservative feelings, imitating every ancient Christian custom, rational or irrational. Felicitas and her friends were baptized in prison, where they were thrust into a noisome dungeon. How could they have been immersed in such a place? This case is good evidence for the practice of the second century as well.
[72] See the articles on Baptism and Baptistery in Smith and Cheetham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, vol. i.
[73] See Dr. John Lightfoot's Horæ Hebraicæ, St. Matt. xvi. 19.
[74] The apostolic manual called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, to which we have already referred, proves that the Church of the Apostles' day required catechisms and introductory formularies just as much as we do.
[75] Sonnet by Matthew Arnold on Rural Work.